


This endless despair

by liionne



Series: A thousand ways to meet [6]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, M/M, So much angst, and kissing, and teenage feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 14:35:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liionne/pseuds/liionne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kirk’s and the McCoy’s had lived side by side in a tiny suburb in Georgia since Jim can remember, and he my or may not fall in love with his best friend Leonard McCoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This endless despair

The Kirk’s and the McCoy’s had lived side by side in a tiny suburb in Georgia for the last fifteen years. Winona Kirk had moved out their after the death of her husband to a freak plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean, and Eleanor and David McCoy had been more than happy to make her and her two boys feel welcome. Especially seeing as their poor boy, Leonard, had had no one to play with for the entirety of his little life; David and El had tried, but they just couldn’t have another child, and the old guy who’d lived next door before the Kirk’s was a cantankerous old bastard who’d spit on you before he looked at you.

Leonard was eight when he first met them - he was practically an adult! The oldest one, Sam, was five, so Leonard found he could hold a conversation with him for a little while before things went a bit awry and Sam got distracted and Leonard used one of his father’s Big Words and they drifted away from one another.

The little three-year-old boy Jim, however, was a totally different story.

He had this weird way of holding Leonard’s attention even though he’d only just turned three, so a lot of what he said was random nonsense and babble and he still had little chubby legs that were kinda beginning to look human but still had that distinct sense of baby.

Leonard could sit in the sandpit for hours building sandcastles with him or digging a big hole “to China” even though the sand pit really wasn’t that deep and Jim didn’t even know what a China was. He would strap Jim up in a helmet and sit him down on his bike with the training wheels and push him the whole length of the street because Jim’s little legs couldn’t yet reach the pedals. There was one time where the two of them crept into Eleanor’s kitchen to ‘bake a mud pie’ and ended up with mud on the ceiling and flour up the walls and it was in their hair and in the fridge and how the hell can two small boys make such a big mess? Eleanor didn’t have the heart to tell them off; not when Jim flashed her his baby blues and Leonard gave her a gap-tooth grin. They’d scurried off into the front street without so much as a slap on the wrist.

But boys grew up eventually, and before anyone could’ve anticipated Leonard was leaving for med school and the Kirk Boys were going to miss him like hell. Jim was thirteen and he’d be damned if he cried when Leonard packed all of his stuff up into the car that morning. He waved him off, smiling like a champ the whole time. It was only when he got back to his bedroom that he cried into the pillow for an hour straight. Winona thought it was just him missing the best friend he’d had his entire life; she didn’t know that it was a mixture of that and the tight hug Leonard had given him down by the creek the night before, the sad smile he’d allowed to grace his features for just a second and the whispered words of “You be good now, Jimmy.”

Leonard wrote to Jim all the time. Every two or three days for every week of every semester. He came back for holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July. He was always back for two or three months in the summer, and Jim began to live for it. Before he’d hated summer; he’d had to endure his birthday, with his father’s anniversary hanging over his head all the while. Winona would smile but she’d be sad too and it was only ever Leonard that could make his birthday actually feel like a birthday. Leonard always came home for Jim’s birthday.

“Jesus, kid. Sixteen. When’d you grow up?” Leonard ruffled Jim’s hair.

“Quit it.” Jim snapped, but he was grinning as he shoved Leonard’s hand away.

They were down by the creek, down by their spot, nestled in the trees by the water’s edge. The fairy lights Leonard had hung through the trees when he was sixteen and Jim was eleven still snaked through the leaves, kept working by Jim, who came down to check on the generator they were hooked up to every so often. Jim was sat with his knees pulled up to his chest, and Leonard sat with his legs crossed beneath him.

“Get anything good, then?” He asked, looking over to Jim and leaning back on his hands.

Jim shrugged. “Same crap as usual. Cologne, a new shirt and a book. And scrap parts, actually. Sam got me scrap parts. I’m fixing up an old car.”

Jim was like a miracle when it came to cars. He’d fixed Leonard’s old piece of crap with the flaking red paint more than once.

“Still haven’t got that puppy I asked for when I was six, though.” He said, raising his eyebrows. “She owes me on that one.”

Leonard chuckled. “You and a puppy are a really bad idea. Hell, you _are_ a puppy. What’ll I do with two puppies?”

“I’m not a puppy.” Jim said, unfolding his legs that had gotten a lot longer since Leonard had last seen him. He squared his shoulders. “I’m manly as hell.”

Leonard held a straight face for exactly six seconds before he burst into laughter. Jim followed suit, and they ended up laying side by side on the grass, looking up at the stars.

“I’d love to go up there.” Jim murmured.

Leonard turned his head to look at him. He said nothing.

“That’s what dad was aiming for. You’ve gotta serve in the airforce and stuff before they’ll let you be an astronaught. He was in his last year, ‘bout to take the entrance exams. Never made it, though.” Jim sighed.

Leonard propped himself up on one elbow. “That’s not your fault, Jim.”

“No.” Jim shook his head. “No, I know. But- She looks at me, and I _feel_ like it’s my fault. Like I did it.”

Leonard shook his head now, closing his eyes. He was about to argue when Jim said, “God damn I just hate this day. So much. She wants to think about dad but here I am pushing myself onto her. I never know whether to be mad at her or mad at me.”

“Neither.” Leonard murmured, but Jim wasn’t exactly listening.

“Sam does it too. He remembers dad. I know he does. He’s pissed that I look more like dad, too. He doesn’t really think about it until today though.” Another sigh fell from Jim’s lips. Leonard looked at them, slightly parted, a little chapped. Jim’d wrote to him not two months before and told him that he’d finally gotten his first kiss from a girl called Gaila and she was great, really great. He wondered where Gaila was now - after that letter, she’d never been mentioned again.

He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but Leonard found himself pressing his lips to Jim’s in the softest, most earnest of kisses. Jim tensed for a moment below his lips, before melting into them, leaning up for more. He sat up, pulling Leonard with him as he attempted to pull him closer, wrapping gangly arms around Leonard’s body. Leonard laced his fingers through Jim’s hair to hold him close, a little surprised by the softness of it. He could have happily stayed like that all night, well into the early hours of the morning-

When Leonard pulled away, it was only because he felt like a bad person.

Jim blinked, looking up at Leonard with electric blue doe eyes. “What was that?” He murmured, linking a few times.

Leonard flopped down onto his back. “I wish I knew.” he muttered.

He really did feel horrible. Jim was sixteen - _sixteen_ \- which was legal, sure, but _just_ legal. And Jocelyn, good, sweet Jocelyn, the girl he’d been sort-of seeing since returning home from Christmas. And of course, Leonard was twenty one. He was an adult. The age gap would be disgusting to everyone and their mother. He’d be ostracised. Shunned.

But damn it Jim’s lips looked good in the soft light of the moon and the fairy lights that hung above their heads.

Jim lay down again and rolled onto his side, his face close to Leonard’s, nose almost pressing against his cheek. Leonard had no choice but to huff a little and turn to look at him.

“We should do that again.” Jim grinned.

Leonard shook his head. “We can’t, Jim.”

A shadow crossed Jim’s face, and Leonard sighed internally. “Why not?” Jim murmured.

“S’not right, Jim.” Leonard murmured. “Just not right.”

Jim was becoming a little hurt. And when he was hurt, he got sarcastic and cynical and cold and it was always only Leonard who could bring him out of it. “What, that wasn’t heterosexual enough for you?”

Leonard snorted. “As if that’s what’s stoppin’ me.”

“So what is?”

Jim’s question made Leonard breathed a heavy sigh. He sat up again and Jim followed, their knees touching and their hands nearly so. They faced each other, forehead bowed close together. “Because you’re sixteen, Jim. You’re sixteen, and I’m twenty one and-”

“And I’m a kid, right.” Jim nodded, looking away. The angry set to his jaw told Leonard that he hadn’t accepted it as easily as he’d pretended. “I see.”

“And you’re my best friend.” Leonard finished. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

“You won’t, Bones, it’ll be great.” Jim’s voice sounded so soft, so hopeful. Leonard hated that he had to crush it. “I know you go cross country but we’ll talk, we always talk, and then I’ll see you every summer and every winter and-”

“Jim,” Leonard said softly. Jim faltered, and stopped completely. He’d heard that tone before, but never on Leonard’s voice. It was the tone his mother used when Jim wanted to talk about his father. The ‘Jim stop talking this isn’t happening’ tone. “Jim, we can’t. I’m real sorry.”

“Sure you are.” Jim muttered. He stood, scowled at Leonard one more time, and left.

~*~

Leonard didn’t come home for winter that year. Technically he did - he was in Georgia, sure, but he was in Savannah, celebrating Christmas with Jocelyn and her family. Leonard said he was real sorry, but his parents told him not to worry, so long as he brought Jocelyn home next year. Leonard promised; Jim felt like shit.

Leonard had talked about her in his letters, which were becoming horribly short and horribly less frequent. Where Jim had been getting one every two days, he was now getting one every two weeks. Two weeks turned to two months, two months to four, and then the letters stopped all together. And for the first few weeks, Jim cried himself to sleep.

And then he grew the fuck up.

Leonard stopped coming home when his father died. He died right in the middle of the semester, and even though he took a plane out and stayed at home for two weeks, Jim didn’t see him once. He refused to. He didn’t go to the funeral. Instead he stayed and cried, and not just because Mr. McCoy, the closest thing he’d ever had to a dad in his whole entire life was being laid into the ground but because he didn’t even have the guts to go and see him off because Leonard was going to be there.

Leonard got married the summer after. Jim was invited, but he didn’t go. His mom and Sam said it was a beautiful ceremony.

Sam left when Jim was eighteen. He had just turned 21, said he’d met the girl he wanted to marry and was going away with her, to her home. She was a nice enough girl, too; she was British, with curly auburn hair and a bright, full smile. Jim wondered if Jocelyn was as pretty as her. If Leonard was as taken with her as Sam was with his girl.

Jim moved out when he was twenty-two, but only because he couldn’t stand to be in that house for a second longer. His mom understood; eventually she sold her house, and moved in with Eleanor next door. Jim got an apartment in the city, where he could get into as much damn trouble as he wanted to.

And he did get in trouble. He got into bar fights and jacked cars and fucked girls in alleyways because when he did it was easier to forget. He felt a jolt of life running through his veins and suddenly the constant stream of _LeonardMcCoyLeonardMcCoyLeonardMcCoy_ running through his was broken.

It was a Sunday morning when Jim woke up to a banging head ache, a pain in his ribs and the bright white of sunlight seeping through his window. Too bright - he turned over to bury his face in the pillows, shunning the sunlight as best he could.

There was a loud knocking on his door. He groaned.

“Coming!” He yelled, fumbling round for a pair of sweatpants before he went to answer the door. The knocking only stopped for a little while before it resumed again. “Jesus, dude, I said I’m com-”

His voice stopped when he opened the door and beheld the sight in front of him.

Six years had definitely taken their toll, but Jim couldn’t say it was a bad thing. His hair, once so carefully styled was now in a tangled mess, with the look of having had hands run through it on several occasions. Stubble peppered his chin and his eyes were blood shot, but his skin was still as tan as ever and he was still as tall as he once was and he still worried at his lower lip when he was nervous. He was Leonard McCoy. Maybe older, more lines around his eyes, shoulders a little more slumped, but he was Leonard. Jim’s Leonard.

His assessment had taken little more than a second. Leonard sucked in a deep breath. “Hey Jim.”

“Bones.” Jim murmured.

Bones eyes flicked over his shoulder, and then looked back to Jim, but they never met his eyes. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” Jim murmured, stepping aside to let him in.

Bones had a bag in his hand, a duffel bag, and he shuffled it around in the palm of his hand before looking around the apartment. Jim shut the door quietly, wishing he was a little bit more dressed and not unbelievably hung over.

“Nice place you got-”

“Why’re you here, Bones?” Jim asked, raising an eyebrow.

Leonard sighed, muttering something almost incoherent about ‘getting straight to the point’. He looked at Jim with chapped lips pressed into a thin line. “I got a divorce.”

The hard exterior Jim had began to build up when he’d let Bones inside crumbled, shaken at the very foundations and threatening to crush him as it toppled down. Of course. That was why he looked so worse for wear. So ill. Why he’d come looking for a home and ran to the one place he knew he’d never be turned away from.

 _‘To the one shmuck who’d never kick him out._ ’ Jim corrected in his head.

“How’d you find me?” Jim asked, his voice quiet.

A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips; Jim felt a knife twist in his stomach. “Went home, expecting you to be there. Noticed a new car outside your house, found your mom in my room. I guessed you weren’t there and they told me where you were.”

“How kind of them.” Jim grimaced. God damn his mom. God damn El. God damn them both.

“You can- you can say no if you want, Jim, I won’t be offended, but uh-” Leonard sighed. He looked like he was weighed down by an almighty burden. “-Can I stay here? For a while?”

Jim should have said no. He should have said no and thrown him out and yelled at him and screamed at him and beat him up and told him never, ever to come back because he’d ruined his god damn life, his first love, his only love, the one proper love he’d ever had. But he couldn’t. “Sure.” he shrugged. “I don’t have a spare room but you’re welcome to the couch.”

Bones gave a weak smile that Jim thought might have been seen on the face of a man in pain just before death consumed him. “Thanks, Jim.”

Jim didn’t answer. He just went back to bed.

Leonard was there for a week before they said so much as five whole words to one another. And it all happened because Leonard was in the wrong place at the wrong time and Jim was being a big damn baby.

He was crying. He hadn’t cried in so long, since the funeral, since he’d decided to sort his life out and let go and stop clinging to the idea of Leonard McCoy like with his fingertips. But now he cried into his pillow, curled up in a fetal position, biting a knuckle to keep from sucking in loud, hysterical breaths. Leonard shouldn’t have been able to hear him from the living room, and he couldn’t. But when he got up to go to the bathroom he heard it; the faint sobbing, the sound of high pitched, shaky breaths that were trying so hard to be concealed but revealed themselves anyways. He’d heard it many a time in the hospital, when a patient wanted to cry but didn’t want to be heard. He’d heard it at home, when he’d returned to see his father off and had stood outside of his mother’s room for fifteen minutes wondering if he should go in to comfort her. He’d heard it from upstairs at his home in Florida, as Jocelyn cried herself to sleep but refused to talk about why she did it. He was more than familiar with the sound of muffled sobs.

“Jim?” He opened the door just a crack, poking a foot in, an arm, not quite making his way in yet.

Jim sniffled, made a noise that reflected self disgust, and muttered, “Go away.”

“Jim.” Leonard said again, but his voice was firmer this time. Still soft, still careful, but demanding an answer. He stepped inside the room. “Jim, tell me what’s wrong.”

“As if you care.” Jim spat. He wasn’t entirely sure where that had come from.

Leonard gave him a long look that Jim couldn’t decipher. “Of course I care.” He said softly.

“Liar.” Jim snapped. “If you cared-” He sucked in a shaky breath. “If you cared you wouldn’t have left me, and you wouldn’t have stopped talking to me, and you’d have come home every summer and every winter and you’d have given me the best presents for my birthday like you always did but you didn’t. You don’t care. You’re only here cause Jocelyn kicked you out on your ass.”

Bones gave what Jim thought was a soft groan. He moved to the side of Jim’s bed, sitting somewhere near his stomach. He looked down at Jim, and tentatively stretched a hand out to rest on his arm. He felt angry. He felt hurt. But mostly he felt like a terrible, terrible person. “I’m sorry, Jim.”

Jim just snorted through his tears.

“Don’t gimme that, kid, I am sorry. I _am_.” Leonard frowned. Jim looked up at him warily. “I’m sorry I left you all that time but you gotta know that it killed me.”

“Sure. Living in Florida with your fancy girlfriend and fancy house and fancy doctorate was totally killing you.” Jim muttered.

“I’m serious, Jim.” Leonard’s tone was still hard, still firm. Jim needed to know this and if Bones had to beat him into it he would.

Jim was back to his default, to the sarcasm and the cynicism that hid the hurt. He sat up, his face just inches from Leonard’s as he stared at him coldly. “Go on then,” he muttered, not bothering to wipe away the damp streaks running down is cheeks. “Why did you leave? Why never come back if it was killing you so fucking much?”

Leonard pressed his lips into a thin line and looked away. He looked away from Jim’s face and from the angle of his half-naked body and those blue eyes that weren’t as lit up as they were six years ago. He grit his teeth together. “Because everyone time I so much as looked at you I wanted to kiss you. I was god damn obsessed, like a teenager or some shit and I couldn’t do that, Jim. You were sixteen and you were my best friend-”

“So instead of just dating me you thought you’d ruin our relationship completely?” Jim sneered. “Good idea, Bones, your nobel prize’s in the post.”

“I just had to get away, Jim.” Bones murmured, looking at the floor in front of him. “You can love someone too much.”

Jim was silent then. He’d never thought that Bones left because he loved him. He thought that Bones had left because he didn’t care, he met someone better, he got a better life.

“If you’re gonna say you wrote me every single day for a year I’ll throw up on you.” Jim murmured.

Leonard kept his eyes on the floor but he still smiled. It grew on him, starting at the middle of his lips, and then the edges curved up, higher and higher until he was grinning, and he shook his head, fluffy hair falling into his eyes. Jim was grinning too, and it felt good to smile so genuinely for a change.

“I can’t say I did.” Leonard chuckled.

“Well did you build me a house?” Jim asked.

“Thought about it, but no. Sorry.” Leonard grinned.

“What the hell are you good for if you can’t do stupidly romantic shit for me?” Jim grinned, raising an eyebrow.

“Patching you up when you get your ass kicked.” Bones murmured, reaching out to gently thumb the yellowing bruise around Jim’s eyes from his last bar brawl.

Jim looked at him for a long time. Starting at his hairline, he looked downward, taking in every inch of Leonard’s face as the other looked right back at him. His eyes settled on his lips, and he was pretty sure he could feel Leonard’s own gaze looking at his lips too, and then it was all too clear what he should do.

He surged forward to press his lips to Leonard’s before he could argue or pull away, but to his relief he found that Leonard met him halfway. They crashed together, a tangle of tongues and teeth and limbs and bed sheets but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, because Jim had fisted his hands in the cloth covering Jim’s back and Leonard had laced his fingers through his cropped blonde hair. Jim’s tongue licked along Leonard’s bottom lip and sometimes Leonard would pull back just enough to take Jim’s lip between his teeth and they would moan, because the heat and the wet was too good, but the feeling of rekindling a fire, of finding something that was lost, buried 20, 000 leagues under the sea was even better.

When they pulled away they were both breathing heavily, hot breath bouncing of each other’s skin. Jim pulled Bones back into the bed, and they wrapped their arms around each other.

Jim’s lips were pressed to Leonard’s collarbone, and Leonard’s to Jim’s forehead. They lay in silence for a moment before Leonard murmured, “I’m sorry, Jim.”

Jim gave a soft smile into the tan skin of Leonard’s shoulder. “I forgive you.”


End file.
